Why Bill Moos is fed up with major college sports

Bill Moos, former player, coach and athletic director of some of the country’s past and present powerhouses, has seen the future of college athletics and is glad he retired to 63 acres near Spokane.

Moos tells the tales of that career in his new book, “Crab Creek Chronicles: From the Wheat Fields to the Ball Fields and Beyond,” a collection of vivid stories that put the reader on the field during one of the most violent times in college football.

After growing up in the farming town of Edwall about 35 miles southwest of Spokane, Moos became the athletic director at Washington State, his alma mater. He also led the athletic departments at Oregon, Montana and Nebraska. He retired at Nebraska in 2021, two years into the transfer portal and the summer college athletes would begin signing endorsement deals and getting paid for their name, image and likeness (NIL).

On Tuesday Moos will join the Northwest Passages Book Club to talk about “The Crab Creek Chronicles,” a memoir that captures a time in college sports we may never see again.

In a recent conversation, the day after the University of Michigan won the men’s NCAA basketball championship, the first team to win a title with a starting five all made of transfers, Moos opened up about his past and the current challenges for young athletes.

S-R: What do you think about conference realignments which have continued since you left Nebraska?

Moos: In one word, I’m appalled. Conference realignment has really changed the complexion of college athletics. It has applied limits on young people’s ability to live their dreams.

I had a dream of playing major college football that was instilled in me when I was 8 years old. Through a lot of good luck and sacrifices and hard work, I was able to do that at Washington State, within an hour and a half of where I grew up.

That kid from a one-horse town isn’t going to be able to do that as easily as I was. You know, dreaming of playing in the Rose Bowl, it can’t happen anymore or chances are very slim. I’d like to know what the payroll was for that Michigan basketball team last night. I’m gonna guess it was pretty high. When that train left the station, amateurism was left behind, and that’s too, too bad.

S-R: You were player, a coach and athletic director at a time when there were a lot of strong regional rivalries. Now they play in separate conferences, teams play across the continent. What do you think that means to the fans?

Moos: There was tremendous fan base at Nebraska. They would fill up the stadiums at Kansas, Kansas State and Colorado (in the Big Eight and Big 12 conferences). They were easy to travel to.

All of a sudden, when I was with the Huskers, Nebraska had to travel to the East Coast (Rutgers) and thousands of miles to play a (Big Ten) conference game. And that was long before Washington, Oregon, and the (Los Angeles) schools came in. And not to even have an affiliation with the Rose Bowl (featuring the champions of the Big Ten and Pac-12 for most of the 20th century), that’s sad too. Now, the Rose Bowl is really little more than a play-in game for a national championship spot.

S-R: As you write in your book, you helped start the academic athletic program at Oregon. Obviously you thought academics was important in the athletic program as well. How do you think the transfer portal and NIL (Name, Image and Likeness payments) affects athletes’ ability to get their education?

Moos: I stand firm that as a student athlete, the two things that really meant the most to me was the opportunity to get a quality education and the camaraderie of my teammates. You just turn on a Saturday college football game and they’re not talking about the linebacker out of Yakima, Washington. They’re talking about the linebacker that transferred from Cal and the year before transferred from SMU. I cherished being able to get that degree and to put my hand down in the grass next to a teammate that I’d lockered with for four years. It was something I emphasized in the 38 years of being a Division I athletic director. I’m just not so sure that’s the case anymore.

S-R: You do occasionally hear about professional athletes, despite making millions of dollars, going back to get their degree.

Moos: But it’s not the norm. It is encouraging to hear that they sometimes go back and also that they on some occasions support the schools where they attended. I applaud those that come back and get their degree, but there’s a lot more examples of those who end up with problems – financial problems with bad advice and poor judgment.

S-R: How have transfers and NIL affected the coaches’ abilities to build teams and help players?

Moos: Well, they’re getting paid a lot of money, too. I write in my book, when I was at Oregon there were three football coaches making $1 million a year. They were Phil Fulmer (Tennessee), Steve Spurrier (Florida) and Bobby Bowden (Florida State). Out of the blue, Washington hires a 34-year-old, coach who had not even won a conference championship in Rick Neuheisel and made him a $1 million coach, and guess who was in the AD’s office next door (Oregon)?

One thing led to another, and the players said, “Why am I giving my blood and sweat so this guy can make millions? I want my piece.”

It’s sad because there’s really good coaches out there, who should be coaching. They’re good teachers. And they’ve left the profession because they were fed up with the direction it was going.

Chris Peterson at Boise State. He was on our staff at Oregon. Everybody tried to hire Chris, and he finally went to Washington. And I remember when he gave it up, he said “Here I am at the Rose Bowl, walking the sidelines as a head coach in the Rose Bowl, and I don’t even feel like I want to be here.” Man that hit home to me.

These coaches have to recruit the same player for four years, now that they can transfer without penalty, and that wears you out. It’s not only year-round, but it’s throughout the career of a player that you work so hard to get in the first place.

S-R: Would you ever consider coming out of retirement to work in the current college environment?

Moos: No. When I finished, I looked myself in the mirror. I had just turned 70 and my mother liked to quote Shakespeare. She used to say, “This above all to thine own self, be true” from Hamlet. And I looked in the mirror and in the bathroom in my office in Nebraska. I said “I’m not being true to me. This isn’t what I’m about.”